


a mouth that has grown my name inside

by amells (aeviternal)



Series: as if i had a string somewhere under my left ribs [6]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Idiots in Love, Pre-Relationship, by 'future' i mean like. book 3's hypothetical ending, so spoilers ahead ig, technically. even tho not much is made of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeviternal/pseuds/amells
Summary: There are certain truths in this world that a person cannot deny.When the detective is injured, Adam comes face-to-face (and mouth-to-mouth) with one.
Relationships: Detective/Adam du Mortain, Female Detective/Adam du Mortain
Series: as if i had a string somewhere under my left ribs [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917049
Comments: 8
Kudos: 50





	a mouth that has grown my name inside

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _"a kiss so desperate that the two wind around each other, refusing to let go until they are finished."_

There are several moments, near the end of things, when Adam thinks that the detective is dead.

He cannot measure these moments in heartbeats, as is his custom, for quite suddenly he finds those to be off-balance, irregular, _unreliable_ as they have not been in over nine centuries. Nor, unfortunately, can he measure them in breaths, because his stopped the moment that he watched June fall in a spray of all-too-familiar scarlet.

He measures them, instead, in actions. The time that it takes for his fist to clench, for his arm to extend. The seconds he feels bone crunch beneath his blows, his knuckles splitting and then bruising and then healing. The number of Trappers between him and the spot where June dropped, and how many are soon dispatched by his onslaught.

Something is roaring in his ears; he cannot parse sound through the rush, as though his head were being held underwater. All he can see is the blood on the floor, the long line of June’s pale forearm where it’s splayed across the concrete, still.

The room smells copper-sweet, intoxicating; of course it does, Adam realises a moment later, because it smells like _her._ Like strawberries bursting in the mouth, like the memory of humanity on his tongue; mortal and rich and _ripe._

Except that it’s _June,_ and so the hunger is brushed aside with the ease of longtime habit, an ache in his gums and his throat that Adam is so used to ignoring he only barely takes note of it.

There is a Trapper stood over her. There is a Trapper stood over her, and still she is not moving.

If only he could _get to them—_

Morgan roars somewhere behind him; a Trapper goes flying into the wall with a loud _crunch._ Farah is swearing, darting out of a man’s reach with swift, sure feet, and when she wrenches his head down into her knee, she does it with a triumphant cry. Nate, behind them all, has knocked a woman to her knees, and he doesn’t hesitate even a moment to hit her over the head with the chair he’s grasped.

None of them see. _None of them see._

A Trapper comes whirling into Adam’s path and he side-steps them, grabbing their arm and bending it until it snaps, and then he keeps moving, because he is the only one who sees, because the man is bending down to pick June up, and because _she is not moving._

Until.

Until suddenly she is.

He doesn’t see what happens, because a woman has made the mistake of trying to knock him down, and he is momentarily occupied with proving to her why she should never again do such a thing.

But when he is done, the Trapper is gone. And June — beautiful, _beautiful_ June, with blood dripping from her nose, with her teeth bared in a snarl that would make any vampire proud — is not.

She turns— their eyes clash, green on brown. She is not gone. She is not dead. She is _here._

She is _alive._

He does not know what happens next. When he tries to recount it later — which he will, many times, turning the memory over and over between his palms until it is creased and dog-eared and thin — he will not be able to say how these events coalesced into what they did, only that it happened.

June grins at him as he finally draws closer, her teeth shining scarlet from her still-pouring nose, and she starts to say, “see? I _told_ you I could—”

And then his mouth is crashing down on hers, and there’s nothing else.

Or— no. Perhaps rather he means: there’s _everything_ else.

She makes a little sound of surprise against his lips, startled in that pure, soft kind of way she so rarely is, and then her hand is passing over his jaw, his cheek, to knot in his hair.

Adam has wondered many times what she might taste like. More times than he would like to admit; more times than he _should_ have, given who he is, who _she_ is. Sweet, he always thought. She would be sweet, like sugared coffee and donuts and fruit. Like pomegranates, perhaps. Like spring.

She is not sweet. Her lips taste of blood and sweat and fear, like touching his tongue to a flaming match or a livewire. Like being struck by lightning. He drinks her down as though she were a glass of fine wine, committing every tang and taste to memory; here, how the ichor of her darkens, thickens, grows rich under his touch; there, how her skin turns to salt, singing in his senses until it is all he can taste, all he can feel, all he can hear.

She does not taste like sugar. She tastes like _life._

Her nails scrape against his scalp and he sighs, leaning into her fingers— and then her lips part and they share one breath, two, before she darts the wet stripe of her tongue against him.

And then he is pulling her closer, _June_ who is alive, _June_ who is not his but might as well be, _June_ who returns colour to the world as though it had never left.

He is folding her into him, now, one hand at the small of her back while the other cradles her skull as though it were a precious, priceless thing. Which it is, _it is;_ his fingers flex against the soft hair there, and he wonders whether he might _feel_ her thinking, if he tried hard enough.

And perhaps she is thinking the same thing, because her hold on his hair tightens, her other hand knotting in his shirt, above his heart — which is racing, racing so fast he cannot keep up, and does she know what she does to him, does she feel it now, does she understand how truly and thoroughly she has undone him? — and staying there.

One of them invites the other in. Is this not always the way? Someone must always let the monster in. Someone must always open the door.

His tongue slides over hers, their noses knocking together, the two of them open now to the core, and still it is not enough, still he needs _more—_

 _How_ has he not kissed her before this? How can he allow a moment to pass again where he _is not kissing her?_ For her mouth is like nectar, like wine; the kiss quickens, and he cannot say which of them it is that dives deeper, knows only that they are the both of them drowning, lost in the brush of lips and teeth and tongues.

“Adam—” she gasps out, lips still brushing his, breaths heaving in the space between them, and for a moment this is all there is. His name on her tongue, her fingers around his heart. Two bodies, alight where they touch.

And then Morgan scoffs. “You guys are disgusting.”

“Morgan!” Nate hisses.

And Adam remembers.

He remembers who he is, who _she_ is. Where they are, and all he has lost. All he could stand yet to lose.

Her body is so warm in his arms. Like fire; all-consuming and bright and _terrifying,_ licking over everything he loves before it swallows it whole.

“Adam,” Ju— the _detective_ says again.

And nothing has changed.

**Author's Note:**

> as per usual come scream @ me on [tumblr](https://solasan.tumblr.com/) abt this idiot vampire man if u wanna because i am, at all times, losing my mind over him


End file.
